Heard on the Hill: A good football program can help more than just athletics donations; KU grad and Richmond weatherman goofs around in weather studio, resulting in viral Internet video

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• I read an article recently about how KU’s athletics corporation is taking pains to increase its football success. Most of us know football success usually equals financial success for athletic departments.

But I’d also spotted this recent blog post from the Chronicle of Higher Education that shows that the lack of a good football team just might be hurting KU in other ways, too.

The blog's author cites research from the National Bureau of Economic Research and author Michael L. Anderson, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Anderson looked at a sharp increase in season wins for a Football Bowl Subdivision program (KU is one of those).

That boost to athletics donations? Yup, that’s there. You can find a 28 percent increase in athletics donations after a nice boost in football wins. But also, applications went up by 5 percent.

It can also boost the number of applicants to a school, reduce acceptance rates and raise average incoming SAT scores, though those effects “weren’t as pronounced,” as the Chronicle put it.

YouTube

Richmond Weather Forecast

Kansas University graduate Aaron Justus messes around with his weather graphics, and then gets a million YouTube views.

• And speaking of weather, thanks to Don Steeples, a KU distinguished professor of geology, who wrote in after reading yesterday’s bit about extreme weather hitting Hill City with five days of 115-degree heat.

Steeples, who owns a farm about 15 miles from Hill City, reported that temperatures didn’t quite climb that high this year, though it was as hot as he could remember.

It did reach 115 degrees for one day — on June 27 — and as high as 114 degrees for two other days in a five-day span where the high temperatures were always over 110.

So, regardless of who you’re checking with, it’s still hot.

• Godzilla hasn’t yet had to be called in to protect Heard on the Hill from a major storm, but that’s probably because your awesome tips you keep sending to ahyland@ljworld.com do a pretty good job of that already.

Perhaps it is correct that achievement in football increases applications, and thus KU could fill its class with more qualified students if it invested heavily in football. The more interesting question is if having a high performing football program is the most efficient way to increase applications. Did the study compare the costs of improving the football program to alternatives like increased marketing, larger scholarships, etc?

I bet that making KU free would have an even larger impact on the number of applications, and thus the quality of the incoming class. Would that be a good move?